A time capsule of the greatest financial mania in the history of mankind, told in real-time by regular folks and patriots. May future generations better understand the madness of crowds, and how power and money corrupt.

43 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Well...If you worked at a auto strip shop and just removed the parts for resale on the black market, but you NEVER actually stole a vehicle...Are you guilty? I say yes and they should all have different degrees of punishment ranging from Jail time (Tangelo) to trash pickup (office janitor)

Give the employees amnesty - then use the evidence to put the executives away - It's executives who created the culture of corruption, who allowed the free holidays to be given for signing up the bad loans.

Put the executives away, and other executives might think twice about the culture they promote within their own companies. (Although, Enron doesn't seem to have prevented Enron x 100).

I've also read anecdotal reports about corrupt practises at other companies - for example, a large retailer (stock code has two letters) which pressures the staff to lodge false product return claims with the suppliers.

The problems are widespread, not just limited to companies like Countrywide.

Only a hand full of whistle blowers should be shown leniency/immunity, otherwise all those complicit in the mortgage fraud that is coutrywide need to be punished (i.e. receoptionists, secretaries and other jobs not involved in the actual origination of loans also should not be swept into the net). All executives, the legal & accounting departments and everyone invovled in the loan origination process need to go to jail!!

Most of the time, an employee have to chose between do what they are told to do or lose their job.Furthermore, it's likely that many of them did not even realize what they were doing.So i say that the right thing to do is to forgive low level employee.

What did countrywide do? Did they hold a gun to peoples head and make them sign. How about PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY, I know its not a known term around the USA. Housing panic we need to start putting the BLAME on the people who took FREE money they all know they couldn't afford. Stop being communists, government isn't the answer, free markets are. Nobody had to buy a home, they DECIDED their own fate. This housing panic was a dividing line, dumb on one side, smart on the other. Blame the DUMB. What did countrywide do but enable stupid people to fullfull, their potential.

The first people to cut a deal always get off light. Look at Fastow at Enron. No one, not even Lay himself, was more guilty than Fastow, yet he basically got a slap on the wrist for beating the other guys to sign a deal.

Now that the FBI is involved, I predict someone will cut a deal in the next 2-3 weeks.

The underwriters at Countryslime better get lawyers. The lower level employees should get a pass as long as they cooperate fully with the FBI. I hope the investigation results are made public, but I doubt we will hear about all of it.

I say yes and they should all have different degrees of punishment ranging from Jail time (Tangelo) to trash pickup (office janitor)

I agree with your first point but would you really sentence a janitor to pick-up trash? The janitor is the one person who really had nothing to do with this mess and second.. like he gives a crap, he would be picking up trash anyways.

I agree to an extent, however the bulk of the blame rests on upper-management, since they were the ones receiving vulgar bonuses on top of their vulgar salaries. Upper management were also the ones threatening employees with layoffs if they didn't perform as expected - namely, pushing liar loans.

Well...If you worked at a auto strip shop and just removed the parts for resale on the black market, but you NEVER actually stole a vehicle...Are you guilty? I say yes and they should all have different degrees of punishment ranging from Jail time (Tangelo) to trash pickup (office janitor)

Only down to regional managers. They push the other mid-management and lower employees to move the fraud up the chain of command. "We need the commissions" is the usual reply to a mid-manager trying to tell them that an application is fraudulent.

The ol' "I was just following orders" excuse didn't fly with Nuerenberg and now The Hague. That excuse shouldn't fly with Countrywide Exploding Mortgages. But Angelo Mozillo should take the biggest fall and not sit in a country club jail. Put his orange mug in with the gangbangers in some fed pen.

BTW, how DID Angelo get orange anyways? Any dermatologists in the crowd?

I worked for Wells Fargo and quit after seeing how unethical the lending practices. I could not feel comfortable if I was making a living putting people into massive debt. Most of the borrowers were complete bafoons. Regardless, that does not give us the right to scam them like the banks salespeople have done.

Nah...the FBI already said that's not interested in trillions of dollars in mortgage fraud that will bring this country down into the toilet. Sptizer's rendezvous with a high class hooker is much more important. Now you know why the shady group wanted the Patriot Act to pass so badly, which allows endless wiretapping of anyone against their interests.

How about PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY, I know its not a known term around the USA.

The notion of personal responsibility only applies to those who had access to a stable home and education. If you keep creating dumb Americans and ignoring them, don't be surprised when they sign any dot lines pushed by any shark, or don't be surprised when they shoot your daughters several times during robberies while they're away in their wonderful College life. Lots of selfish people living in a pink bubble in this country, who're not able to identify the consequences of social class neglect.

They answer is yes. People are arrested every day for unknowingly committing or being unknowingly complicit in a crime. It doesn't mean they'll be convicted. Even if employees are arrested or indicted, I'm sure there are methods for some to get out of conviction or serving time by cooperating with FBI/SEC investigators. This is going to take considerable time just for Countrywide's case. But how many similar businesses went under recently and why? It's incredible that so much fraud could have been tolerated and allowed to continue for so long without any media inquiry or official state or federal investigation. Only now in the end, with the store gutted and everything vandalized, do we understand.

Katrina was just one horrific example. The Justice Department is the second collossal f-up example. Hiring incompetent cronies to fill government positions tends to destroy rule of law and decimates economies.

Prosecute yes but we need to realize that with crooks running our government commiting their crimes right on CNN in front of us, what kind of message does BUSHCO send to to the corporations? until we throw the entire Bush Crime Syndicate in the Hague or in front of a FIRING SQUAD, corporate crime will get worse. 'Much more to gain then worry about what possible consequences may arise.